Isle of Jura

The sea eagle glides below, its broad wings and white tail adjusting to the ruffling breeze, its yellow eyes scanning, indifferent to our presence on a patch of grass above Creag an t-Seoil. We are perching on the northern tip of Jura, on our last full day here, looking across the roiling waters of the Gulf of Corryvreckan towards Scarba. Our first ever sight of a sea eagle, a wind-lord in its elements, feels like the finale to our week on the island, although Jura likes to ambush expectations. The bird is soon out of range of my feeble binoculars, heading down the east coast. I want to believe it has a nest. They mate for life. Their courtship ritual climaxes in a tumbling fall from flight, talons locked in an apparently fatal embrace, only to disengage at the last moment and fly free to spend another year together.

Red deer hinds graze oases of grass amongst inedible bracken on the promontory below. A couple of tourist boats edge their way into the sparkling waters of the straits as we wonder whether we can see the whirlpool at all, the third largest in the world. There’s definitely something out there, a frothy disturbance not far from the coast of Scarba, in roughly the right place, but it seems to shift its position. The guidebook says that its genesis is in conflicting tidal surges around a submerged basalt pillar, which sounds pretty immovable to me. We are also told that the whirlpool is at its best (or worst) between flood and half-flood and when there is a strong wind from the south-west. We have a gentle south-easterly.

Having started the day with grey skies and more than a hint of precipitation in the air, there are now splashes of sunshine bringing out the freshness of the grass, saffron of crinkled lichen on grey rock and early purpling of the heather. The effect of sunbeams on the headland is as nothing compared to the magic they perform with the sea. Even from this vantage point, I cannot make sense of the currents that churn the grey-green, green-blue, violet-cobalt, white-flecked waters between Jura and Scarba. A bright orange inflatable powerboat, manned by wet-suited whalewatchers, batters its way through the waves into Corryvreckan, to join the few sedate day-tripping boats already there. As the vessels head in its direction, the whirlpool reveals itself more clearly, surf-spiralling, powered by strengthening tides. Two more launches are chugging across from the Argyll coast. Later, the captain of the powerboat flirts with the whirlpool’s edge; others are more circumspect.

Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, had his own experience of the sea near the whirlpool. Returning from a fishing trip near Glengarrisdale in 1947, he misread the currents, lost his outboard motor and managed to capsize the boat when he and his companions, including his three year old son, were scrambling to safety on some rocks. He should, perhaps, have taken more note of the legend of Breckan, after whom the Gulf is named and who may still seek revenge for his fate. This Viking wanted to marry a Jura princess. Her father told Breckan that if he survived three nights anchored in the whirlpool he would get the girl. The suitor tried the first night with a hemp rope attached to his anchor and the second with a wool rope. Both of these broke but he somehow survived. For the third night he chose to plait a rope made from the hair of virgins but this also broke and he perished. It is said that one of the threads of hair came from a lady who was not what she claimed to be. Another reading of this saga might be that if Breckan was dim-witted enough to think that human hair, of any gender or moral standing, was stronger than hemp, he was doomed to fail.

Another couple arrive. Four feels like a crowd. Jura has just over 200 resident people, outnumbered roughly 30:1 by the deer. There is one public road, the A846, mostly single track with passing places. This connects the Feolin ferry from Port Askaig on Islay, through to the village of Craighouse on the relatively sheltered south-east coast. It then heads north in the lee of the hills to terminate within a dozen miles of where we are sitting.

Driving the road from the ferry in the dusk of our first evening on Jura we saw a pair of marsh harriers frenetically mobbing a golden eagle, which eventually dropped its prey. The harriers were so distressed that I wondered whether the eagle had taken one of their own chicks.

We passed the one distillery, the one hotel, the one shop, the one eatery and the one kirk. Clouds pressed down low over the hills, the water of the Bay of Small Isles glinted grey and silver. Hedgerows and fields sparkled with recent rain. We reached our self-catering chalet next to the B&B at Sealladh na Mara without difficulty. This had all the facilities we needed for a comfortable and economical week; it even had a resident shrew.

My wife Pam finishes her watercolour of Corryvreckan. We decide to amble south from the headland, so we can eke out our remaining hours on Jura at the slow pace that the island induces. We take off our jackets and I convert my walking trousers into shorts. Bruised banks of clouds build over mainland Argyll, but the island is blessed by widening sunlit spaces.

The topography of the eastern coast of Jura is dominated by ridges of hard rock, volcanic dykes aligned north-north-east to south-south-west, interspersed with soft green valleys, very different from the harsh Dalradian quartzite which makes up most of the island. This ancient pre-Cambrian rock forms the three Paps, the mountains of Jura, whose tops we have seen only once all week.

It’s a couple of miles of easy walking due south to Kinuachdrachd, where George Orwell first lived on Jura, before he moved a little further down the coast to the less spartan house at Barnhill. Here he did most of the work on ‘1984’, his urban dystopia so different from the beautiful surroundings in which it was written. After a mile or so, we hear the grumpy debates of a group of grey seals, sounding like barracking backbenchers during Prime Minister’s Questions. The seals are hauled out on flat rocks around Port an Tiobairt but we don’t trouble them. Earlier in the week we had crept through tussock grass bordering Lowlandman’s Bay to be fascinated by the sight of mother seals showing their pups the basics of submarine life and the sound of scolding when their offspring strayed in the kelp. We have not been troubled by midges, though my venture into shorts was rewarded with an impressive collection of ticks.

Kinuachdrachd Harbour is fringed by alders, hazels and rowans, grown tall enough to survive the winter gnawing by the deer. A couple on mountain bikes greet us as they wheel past. Bikes are a good way to see this side of the island. Visitors not bringing a car can avoid MacBraynes’ prices and their circuitous route via Kintyre and Islay by taking the much shorter daily passenger launch out of Tayvallich; bikes go free.

The west coast of Jura is less accessible. We had wimped out of attempting either ‘Evans’s walk’ to Glen Batrick or the path to Glengarrisdale. Both should be well within the range of reasonably fit walkers but are probably too boggy for bikes. A couple of days earlier, we did make our own initially easy way to the west coast where it almost meets the east at Loch Tarbert. This is one of many Tarberts in the west of Scotland – Tarbert meaning ‘carry across’ in Gaelic. It is not difficult to imagine Vikings and others dragging their boats across the mile or so of flatland between the two coasts of Jura. We left the car where Struthan an Anairt, ‘the soft small stream’, crosses the road and walked the level track west. All of Jura fits neatly on to both sides of one Ordnance Survey map. This walk straddled both sides of the sheet. No path is marked round the coast here but we started confidently round the edge of a peaty bay and across some stepping-stones.

A scramble to a low ridge was rewarded with a view over the intricacies of the loch’s inlets as far as Colonsay on the horizon. A lone golden eagle traversed east across a far hillside. Two men and a boy rowed westwards in a tiny fishing boat. There were deer, of course, solitary or in small groups, keeping well away from us. Jura culls its deer population every year and attracts those who like that sort of thing to stalk them. We followed their tracks over the hills in unbroken sunshine, the views to the north-west getting wider and clearer.

I revel in finding my way in new places, but more than a smidgen of doubt had grown in Pam’s mind. The twin tarns of Lochana Tana appeared just in time to rest her legs and save my reputation as a navigator. The next four miles included a steady 800 foot ascent to a higher ridge that eventually led us to the lily-covered Loch Braigh a Choire, the headwaters of that soft small stream whose valley would guide us safely back to the car. From my perspective, it was an exhilarating hike, but we had been close to Pam’s limits – just enough of a frisson of risk to add spice to the day. Jura has the sort of fastnesses where, out of the stalking season, one could wander for days without causing offence, but it’s always best to let someone know your plans, just in case.

As our shadows begin to lengthen on the long walk back of our final day, the colours in the waters of the Sound of Jura acquire a deeper blue, contrasting with the greens and greys of the Argyll coast and the dark clouds massing above it. A strong current swirls northwards, close to Jura, as if the whole island was a megatanker sailing south. A hundred metres or so out from the shore the waters are calmer. Here a couple of sea canoes slice their way, matching our pace and direction. A few yachts tack back towards Argyll; others are skimming south. The waters around the Hebrides must hold many joys for sailors who wish to explore the ancient sea-ways and make new ones of their own.

Confirmed landlubbers, we finally reach the car and drive back down the coast. Tussocky lowland that looks monotonous from the road is, we now know, full of delights underfoot – yellow asphodel, purple orchids and, if we are lucky, the delicate white flower of the grass of Parnassus. In any boggy bit, which is most of the rest, starfish-shaped butterwort and the tentacled sticky-saucered sundew may be found, both insectiferous with petite but beautiful white flowers. The hedgerows are rich with montbretia, fuschia, dog rose, vetch, stitchwort, orchids and more.

Further towards Craighouse, we pass a stag party of six youngsters by the road, looking down their noses at us. Don’t they know how perilously close they are to the start of the stalking season? They flick their antlers. The question is beneath them. Jura means ‘Deer Island’ in Gaelic. We thank them for sharing it with us. We will return.

© David Cundall

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